We begin with news of the first CE certified mole checking app, SkinVision which rates moles using a simple traffic light system (using a red, orange or green risk rating). The app lets users store photos in multiple folders so they can track different moles over time. It aims to detect changing moles (color, size, symmetry etc.) that are a clear sign that something is wrong and that the person should visit a doctor immediately.

This contrasts with the findings of a paper published in June examining 46 insulin calculator apps, 45 of which were found to contain material problems, resulting in the conclusion that :”The majority of insulin dose calculator apps provide no protection against, and may actively contribute to, incorrect or inappropriate dose recommendations that put current users at risk of both catastrophic overdose and more subtle harms resulting from suboptimal glucose control.”, which to say the least of matters is worrying. It is reassuring therefore that the MHRA were ahead of the game in tackling this the moment the paper was published. Hopefully there is growing recognition in Europe of the benefits of CE certification, although in the US avoiding FDA regulation is still attracting readers (even the FDA wants to avoid wearables).

Any piece on apps always has to have its health warning so this time I have dug deep to find Artur Olesch of the Polish Healthcare Journal, who reminds us of all the bad things that health & wellness apps can do. Nothing I’ve not been told before though a good summary and a nice graphic.

Continuing in with the positive, it’s also good to see that the American Heart Association has concluded that mobile technology may help people improve health behaviors. As they say:

Smartphone applications and wearable sensors have the potential to help people make healthier lifestyle choices, but scientific evidence of mobile health technologies’ effectiveness for reducing risk factors for heart disease and stroke is limited…

In other words, if we understand it right, vital signs measurement plays second fiddle to behaviour change: no wonder the WSD was less than fully effective! Talking about the WSD, those management consultants who disappeared from the digital health space afterwards are, as we observed last year, back telling everyone how to do it all over. Entitled “EY’s new thinking on health” is a particularly depressing article in the Malta Independent that suggests the paper has swallowed a particularly unfocused press release whole; it leaves the reader wondering both what is new and whether EY do think on the topic.

Hanging on for one more story to the WSD thread, it’s nice to see Philips (that this reviewer chose for the Newham WSD telehealth project in 2006) has established a new partnership with Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and NHS West Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group to launch the Supported Self Care Champion Project in Cheshire. This is designed, according to the blurb, to provide state-of-the-art telehealth support programmes and equipment to the region.

A small spot of genuine disruption is exposed in this clip about new healthcare startup Pager that claims to be bringing back the house-call. TTA was recently emailed a link to a nice video of the recently introduced Dr Now service in the UK (that this editor has previously been asked to advise) seems to be heading in a similar direction. There’s even a virtual nurse, Molly, now. As a senior (though not yet in need of the list of 11 essential apps mentioned earlier), I occasionally reflect on how technology has enabled services that when I was young were taken for granted, and then became hopelessly uneconomic – the regular grocery deliveries, the GP house-calls and all the other services that came to our door in rural Cheshire. The only one missing now is the tinker who used to sharpen all our knives on his bicycle wheel-driven grindstone.

The clip that more people emailed me about than any other this summer was that from Ipsos-Mori entitle the Digital Doctor report 2015. This “sought to uncover how Doctors feel about digital health, and how they see its role developing in the future”. There are sufficiently interesting statistics in the report (eg 25% of believe wellbeing apps will be a part of future treatment plans, 13% don’t) for this editor to wonder as to the basis of it, so I wrote asking for numbers, selection criteria and the response rates from the doctors approached (not always noted for having time on their hands to answer questionnaires). Sadly all I was given were numbers: 56 in the UK, 42 in Germany & 33 in France. Now I’m no qualified statistician, however I’d need some pretty powerful other information on selection & response rate before believing that 56 doctors in the UK (I am presuming they are GPs although the communication I got back occasionally referred to HCPs, so they may not be) is a representative sample of the 35,000 GPs currently practising, and even more so for the other two countries where the ratios are worse.

Fully on the wearables side, a group in Singapore has come with a sensor-enabled adult diaper, which, slightly surprisingly, is being toted as a new innovation by developers IBN (haven’t they had them for babies for a while?). The case for “hearables” is well made in this Retaildive article that points out that earbuds are “the only piece of wearable tech to have gained ubiquity and social acceptance,” and they are just about to get much smarter. Wearables for kids seem to be developing fast, too – this article has an interesting selection, with a strong focus on education. Another article describes the Cicret bracelet that turns your wrist into a tablet computer – amazing!

Our definitions

Telehealth and Telecare Aware posts pointers to a broad range of news items. Authors of those items often use terms 'telecare' and telehealth' in inventive and idiosyncratic ways. Telecare Aware's editors can generally live with that variation. However, when we use these terms we usually mean:

• Telecare: from simple personal alarms (AKA pendant/panic/medical/social alarms, PERS, and so on) through to smart homes that focus on alerts for risk including, for example: falls; smoke; changes in daily activity patterns and 'wandering'. Telecare may also be used to confirm that someone is safe and to prompt them to take medication. The alert generates an appropriate response to the situation allowing someone to live more independently and confidently in their own home for longer.

• Telehealth: as in remote vital signs monitoring. Vital signs of patients with long term conditions are measured daily by devices at home and the data sent to a monitoring centre for response by a nurse or doctor if they fall outside predetermined norms. Telehealth has been shown to replace routine trips for check-ups; to speed interventions when health deteriorates, and to reduce stress by educating patients about their condition.

Telecare Aware's editors concentrate on what we perceive to be significant events and technological and other developments in telecare and telehealth. We make no apology for being independent and opinionated or for trying to be interesting rather than comprehensive.